Maths for biology

Designed and produced by the French CoI

his c-book explores some mathematics useful in biology, in order to answer questions such as “is a whale heavier than the tallest tree on earth”, “how does this plant grow”, “what sort of spiral is it?”.

Dealing with approximations is an important pedagogical goal of this c-book unit. Many activities invite students to discuss and import inside their c-book elements from the outside world such as uploading pictures and data, in order to check whether the tools that have worked fine on some given examples can fit their own data... Cross-widget communication allows a geometrical measurement in Cinderella, to be compared with algebraic expressions in EpsilonWriter, checking whether an observed ratio is indeed the golden ratio or not. Open-ended questions related to modelling spirals can lead the students to experiment in a half-baked kind of micro-world where an algebraic expression gives rise to a spiral and the user has to find the formula that best fits its picture. 3D models of volumes allow understanding the formulae for the volume of a sphere, a cone and a cylinder, used in the model at hand.

The M C Squared project is funded by the European Commission, under the 7th Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration (ICT-2013.8.1 "Technologies and scientific foundations in the field of creativity", Project 610467). The content of this website does not represent the opinion of the European Union and the European Union is not responsible or liable for any use that might be made of information contained herein.